Leafs Cupless due to bad GM's

This is not going to be an article saying the Leafs will win the cup this year and every other year. Instead, I am getting to the root of Leafs woes.Alot of you will disagree with me here, but the fact of the matter is that Toronto IS the centre of the hockey universe. We have in the top five payrolls and the top five profits, and it has the deepest pockets. They make more money then any other team, of course they spend more money then almost any other team. So why haven’t they won a cup in nearly forty years, then?

Everyone loves playing in Toronto, like it or not. Every player loves the atmosphere, the attention and the love that Toronto fans give them. In the Toronto Sun last summer they named a huge groupe of free agents that said playing in Toronto, however unlikely, would be a great experience. These players included Joe Nieuwendyk, Adam Graves, Dmitri Yushkevich, and I believe Sergei Fedorov. In 1997 even Wayne Gretzky wanted to play here, but the Leafs at the time were too cheap to sign him so he opted to sign with the New York Rangers. We even had one of the largest fan base in 1985… when we finished LAST!!

The problem with the Leafs is that they’ve had bad GM’s over the years. We’re the team that could have any one, and yet we have a bunch of aging ex-superstars past their primes.

So knowing that we could almost get any one, who would you go out and get if you were the Toronto Maple Leafs’ GM? Please note that it has to be realistic. When I say we could get almost any one, I mean when they’re available. Jarome Iginla in his position or Martin St. Louis wouldn’t become Leafs, and Daniel Alfredsson doesn’t count. So who would you sign to turn around this franchise?

82 Responses to Leafs Cupless due to bad GM's

The players suck? Geez, makes you wonder how they finish so high every year. If the leaf’s players suck, then so does everyone else seeing as how they finished ahead of everyone, points wise, with the exception of Tampa and Detroit.

Just another example of the know nothing morons that contribute to this joke of a site.

You’re the one sitting here whining about Canadians.I can understand your jealousy though.

It’s Americans such as yourself that make most of us want to puke.

Speaking of money America should contribute more.They are an economically stronger country than Canada and thus should contribute more money.Typical American sitting on his fat ass complaining about Canadians..status quo …

he plays a completely different game physically on the road. he yaps less. hits less. generally the stuff that make him a “good” NHL player he does less of on the road. i mean lets face it, you don’t really want him as your prime scoring option. you have him to piss people off and chip in with a decent point total…

we’re submitting 350M+ to aid the tsunami situation and we are in horrible and growing debt due to the incompetence of this administration. if we were a business we wouldn’t be able to give anyone a cent.

neverminding the whole idiotic war that we have to fund and at some point people are going to realize we need to throw a LOT more money at.

say what you want about us, but we are shipping a lot of cash over there. have 90 helicopters distributing goods across the swathe of destruction and our secretary of state is currently there preparing a brief for what we can and should do to help the situation.

I’ve never considered him a prime scoring option. He’s an ideal 3rd line contributor. He did contribute on the road in Ottawa with hits and drawing a few minors, he just doesn’t show up for road games in philly. haha.

BLAH,BLAH,BLAH CANADIANS ARE BETTER. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, WE DO NOTHING BUT COMPLAIN. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, THE MAPLE LEAVES ARE NOT CHILD MOLESTORS. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, NO WE ARE NOT A BORDERLINE THIRD WORLD COUNTRY.

BLAH,BLAH,BLAH THATS NOT THE REASON WHY MOST CANADIAN HOCKEY PLAYERS MOVE TO THE STATES.

1967 leafs last cup reinstated them to the place they have been 13 times second only to the Habs the New York Yankees of hockey in terms of # of championships.

2002 eastern conf finals game 7 overtime huricanes scored to go to the finals over the leafs. Never had I ever been a leafs fans more then that moment. I was looking for that Wings/Leafs match up in the finals that has not happend since 1967.

Sorry fella I thought thats how we figure out who benefited from a trade. None of the guys you mention that went the other way did anything either. So nothing lossed/nothing gained.

As you’re well aware of i’m sure Toronto is a “want a cup right now” and i’m assuming management caved into the endless fan demands by trading away youth for “right now” kind of players.

Bryan McCabe for nothing.

Signing Gary Roberts.

Signing JS Aubin.

Every team has dead weight if you’re talking about guys like Reichel and Renberg, who was decent whenever he was healthy. cough cough. Czechmanek….cough cough Beezer.

The leafs make no more bone head moves than any other team is my point. Only difference is when someone in the organization farts it’s smeared on every news outlet the next day. Or Tsn holds a 3 hour special on it.

I like the path they’re on now. When it came time to sign free agents, knowing a possible lockout was looming, leaf management went out and spent some big money, and hockey players have a long f ucking memory and will remember that when they have a choice to go somewhere post lockout. Philly management did the same thing.

Ferguson, I mean i’m not going to judge a man after 1 year. He looked at the team in front of him last year, and rightly so he saw the group he had wasn’t going to win this year with youth so he red winged up and loaded up with more veterans, knowing that this year was probably the last chance he’d have to win before the actual rebuilding started.

He stuck to his guns in expanding the scouting staff, and he’s signed every prospect they’ve drafted. Young guys in St. Johns are playing well, and he went out and signed Aubin for peanuts and the guy is tearing it up in the AHL. I know, the AHL, but the league is much deeper this year.

Well dude I could sit here and argue leafs with you all night, but I ain’t going to change your mind, i’m going to go play some hockey.

I’ll leave this with you though. Don’t you think that if the flyers played anyone but the leafs the last 2 years they’d have at least 1 cup? Yeah but they suck though right?

-Mike Gartner was seemed almost done in Toronto (48 games over last 2 seasons), had one good season in Pheonix one mediocre one and he was done.

-Larry Murphy was hated in Toronto, giving away the puck like crazy. You don’t keep a player like this.

-Khristich was a very good offensive player before he got to Toronto, then he turned to crap. Unfortunately the Leafs don’t have a crystal ball.

-Karpovtsev for McCabe, yeah that was a terrible trade. Boy, the Leafs sure got screwed on that one.

-the picks for Housley and Gilmour were late ones. They didn’t work out, but its not like the Leafs sacraficed their future. Its highly likely that none of these picks play in the NHL.

-Kondratiev left St. Johns for Russia midway through the season, do you want to keep this guy. Immonen was an 8th Rounder, Brian Leetch was fantastic for the Leafs. What’s the problem?

-and you list a whole bunch more trades either involving nothing players or even deals. What’s the point?

Trades I didn’t like were Smith, Modin, Markov (but there was something more there if I rember right … holdout?), and Boyes/McCauley. But if you can take 9 years and that’s what you find, while that doesn’t seem like terrible management to me.

While I understand your point of not pinning a coaching career on game seven losses, it is difficult comparing the situations of Sutter and Quinnn, mainly because the Flames were not supposed to be in the position they were. So in his case, it would have been considered a good season.

PErhaps if Quinn would have only lost one game seven series or a series in six games, we could point to shortcomings of players or lack of personnel, however when you loose that many game sevens and have the talent to get as far as they have, a pattern begins to develop. And when it does, as a coach, you have to figure out what you can do differently so that you are more successfull the next time around.

First of all, the entire world has really stepped up to help the victims of the tsunami, including both the U.S. and Canada.

That being said, do the math you jackass. Canada and its population of 30 million people are contributing a minimum of 80 million bucks. The United States with its population of 294 million people are contributing 350 million.

Now, do the math and tell me again who is actually contribution more money per capita. I am not trying to diss the States here, but don’t you dare try to insult my country.

Think before you speak jerky boy, you sound as stupid as the man that leads your country.

My sympathy goes out to all those who have lost family and friends to the tsunami.

just for clarification hockey is not quite like the other sports when it comes to playoff seeding.

in football the teams with the better record have home advantage until the superbowl where it is played in a neutral site.

it is also like that in baseball except the allstar game determines which league gets home advantage in the world series

and in basketball they have it so that they reseed the teams after round 1 in order to have the teams with the better record get home advantage. there is an article on nba.com about realignment and how they changed the playoffs.

so it is only hockey that has to deal with such irregularities as carolina getting home advantage finishing 15 points behind the leafs but cest la vie.

if you are a top team, you should be able to win at home or road no matter what.